Elderly Woman Left in Tears After Stranger's Kindness at Grocery Store

By Amanda Thomason September 4, 2020 at 12:19pm

There are moments all around us that beg for kindness. We can miss them in the hubbub of daily life, but that’s why stories like this one can help us approach our mundane realities with fresh eyes.

Delmarette Stipp, a 75-year-old in San Antonio, Texas, was at a Walmart last month when she ran into a problem that invited an act of kindness.

Her items totaled to $151. She opened her wallet to find $138.

It wasn’t as if she had no money at all — a mere $13 stood between her and her purchases, but instead of offering to help, the people in her immediate area started to become impatient.

“It was very embarrassing,” Stipp told KABB-TV. “I started digging. And, the more I dug, the worse I felt.”

Thankfully, someone who was watching and wasn’t groaning at the hold-up decided to handle the situation himself.

“All of the sudden the clerk next to the lady that was taking care of me said, ‘Hold it,'” she explained. “‘Someone wants to pay.’ I said, ‘No, no. She’s going to take this off.’ And, this guy came through, don’t even know where he was, he came through and said, ‘I want to pay.'”

The guy was 36-year-old Robert Navarro, a security guard and generous soul who later wrote on Facebook that Stipp had reminded him of his own mother. He paid the difference, and Stipp was able to go home with what she’d put in her cart.

Navarro’s actions were deeply appreciated by Stipp, who remembered his charity and wanted to do something more than just thank him.

So she called someone who could do something, and nominated him for “Cash for Kindness.”

“I called Ryan because I wanted everybody in San Antonio to know what a sweet young man you are,” she said. “And, there aren’t very many people in this world who will stand up and do what you did. When I was in line there, you just came right up. You made me cry and you’re still making me cry.”

Ryan Wolf with KABB was the one to hand Navarro the $1,000 in cash when he showed up to Stipp’s expecting nothing more than a simple thank you.

“You made a difference in her life, not because of the amount you spent, but because you chose to stand up and do something for her that nobody else did,” Wolf told Navarro. “In my pocket, on behalf of Miracle Body & Paint and Fox San Antonio, this my friend is for you.”

Navarro said his late mother would have done the same thing and that helping Stipp had felt like a prompting from his mother.

“My mom would have done the same thing as I did for her,” Navarro said. “And, I was feeling like, you know what, my mom was sending me a message right there and then: ‘Help her, son.’ Just the way she raised us, as a single mother with me and my sister.”

He hugged Stipp, explaining how the money would really help him with a down payment on a car, and said “Thank you so much, mom.”

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